Ashton Kutcher’s Netflix Show, The Ranch, Is Unlike Anything Else on Television

What is the weirdest thing about The Ranch, the new series from Netflix that debuts, almost like some kind of joke, on April 1? Is it its old-school, multi-cam, live studio audience-ness, which is then cut with swears and an abundance of sex talk, because this is Netflix and anything goes? Could be. Is it the fact that Ashton Kutcher, actor and producer and brand ambassador and Twitter pioneer, is starring on the show alongside three-time Oscar nominee and longtime Hollywood refugee Debra Winger? That certainly might be it. Or is it that the show—which also stars Sam Elliott, Danny Masterson, and Elisha Cuthbert as blue-collar, small-town Colorado folks—trades in a kind of shabby seriousness, wistful opening credits and all, that we haven’t seen the likes of since maybe Roseanne? Perhaps.

But I’d say the oddest thing about The Ranch, which was created by Two and a Half Men writers Jim Patterson and Don Reo, is simply how compellingly watchable it is, in all its messy, macho, undercooked Real Americanness. It’s unlike anything else on television, even though so many of its forms are re-purposed from TV shows from 20, 30, or more years ago. It deserves credit, at the very least, for doing something different and strange—even if that something is giving us a show whose characters, for the most part, reject difference and strangeness.

The Ranch takes place in the fictional town of Garrison, where Kutcher’s Colt Bennett, faded high-school football star, has returned to lick his wounds after a long stint struggling to play semi-pro ball. Boyish and handsome in his mid-30s, Colt is all ego and libido, which means he clashes with his stern, laconic rancher father, Beau, who Elliott plays with his familiar arch aloofness and gravelly, basso profundo twang. Colt’s got a ne’er-do-well brother, Rooster, who never left the ranch and tomcats around picking up whatever scraps he can. He’s played by Masterson, who relies on his and Kutcher’s fratty rapport from their That ’70s Show days. And then there’s Winger as Maggie, Beau’s estranged, hippieish wife, mother of the two rambunctious man-boys and owner of the local bar. She’s sensible and straight-talking and likes a little weed, it being Colorado and all.

So the Bennetts mill about, the main sets being the kitchen-living-room of the ranch house, the porch outside, and the bar. Colt’s re-entry into this manly atmosphere is bumpy—he wears Uggs and does other sissy, city stuff—and is made more so when he runs into his high-school sweetheart, Abby, a sarcastic, down-to-earth school teacher played by the ever underrated Cuthbert. Colt’s still got a thing for her, and likely she for him, but she has a boyfriend, so Colt instead takes up with a 22-year-old recent former student of Abby’s. The Ranch mines a lot of jokes, and I mean a lot, from its “having sex with hot young girls” plotline, which initially seems to fly in the face of some of the show’s avowed conservative leanings.

Except, this is at root more a show about Hollywood’s idea of identity politics, a squicky, sometimes empty gesture to a red-blooded base that likes their men to be beer- and whiskey-guzzling cooze-hounds and their women to be sweet ’n’ sassy. So the boys get to joke a lot about screwing teenage girls—in one creepy scene, Colt is aroused to find out that his young girlfriend still has her Girl Scout uniform, which, like, aren’t those for actual children?—but then get chided back in line by their Marlboro Man dad and salty, empathic mother. This is a sort of fantasyland, full of free-roaming male id that gets light little zaps when it strays too far off the property. Ain’t it fun to be a guy, and who would want life any other way? Kutcher is in some ways the perfect actor for this kind of thing, both earnest and synthetic. There’s always been an air of performance to his shaggy dude shtick, a tinge of something slick and mechanical and approximated to his aggressive maleness. So he’s at home on The Ranch, where everyone is the idea of something rather than the real thing. (Which is true of all scripted television, of course, but in some cases more glaringly than others.)

The Ranch comes to us in charged, Trumpian times, accidentally reflecting some of the un-Christian anger that seems to animate much of red state-ism these days—the snide, populist kind that thinks being P.C. is for whiny babies. There are no non-white or gay characters on the show, because this is a butch, good-times eden where no one should have to fuss with diversity. The show strikes serious chords, about money mostly, a weariness it proudly wears as bona fides, proof of its blue-collar soul. But really this is a show that, like most anti-P.C. bullshit, springs from a place of pure elitism and haughtiness, a smug certainty in its straight, white, male, middle-class, middle-American righteousness. The Ranch isn’t pandering to your average rural American so much as it is to an aggrieved majority who want some reassurance that the outside world, with all its scolding correctives, hasn’t ruined their fun just yet.

So why, despite all that, is this show so easily, enjoyably consumed? I’m not entirely sure. I don’t align with the show’s politics, both explicit and implicit, and Kutcher has never been my favorite actor. Which should both be pretty big deterrents. And yet they’re not. Because there’s Debra Winger, and there’s Sam Elliott, and there’s the curious, American Playhouse vibe of the show, like a broadcast of a strange, ultimately doomed Steppenwolf production directed by Gary Sinise or something. As a curio, a fascinating novelty, The Ranch is worth a look. It dips far too often into the well of snickering, punching-down humor, but when it slows itself, takes a breath and considers its landscape, lets the mountain wind blow through its hair, with just a hint of melancholy, there’s something bizarrely arresting about the series.

They just don’t make shows like this anymore, y’know? Though, they never really made shows like this. (I guess Louis CK’s short-lived HBO sitcom, Lucky Louie, would be the closest analog.) I’m not sure what, exactly, this show is—it jars you the first time someone says “fuck” out loud and the studio audience laughs, and that tingly, uncertain feeling never quite leaves. Which counts for something, I think. The show makes you lean in closer to discern what it’s all about, which is more than a lot of television can say for itself. And did I mention that Debra Winger is on it? Debra Winger is on The Ranch. What the hell do you make of that.